Online lending platform denies leaking nude photos of female users

Beijing, Dec 6 (IANS) After the naked pictures of over a hundred female users of an online lending platform in China went viral last week, the company denied it posted the pictures, the Global Times reported.

A 10-gigabyte package containing naked pictures and video footage of 167 female college students in China, as well as their identity information went viral last week, according to the news site thepaper.cn.

The naked pictures were from a small number of desperate users who resorted to private transactions with shady lenders while bypassing the platform, JD Capital’s Jiedaibao, a popular online peer-to-peer lending platform, clarified on Thursday on its official Sina Weibo account.

The pictures, serving as a receipt of the loans, are transmitted through social network app WeChat and instant messenger QQ, the Global Times report said.

The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, is reportedly studying ways of collecting and distributing data on how funds raised online are being used because of the risks posed by unregulated lending.

Online peer-to-peer lending platforms have expanded rapidly in China, along with the number of fraud cases.